Saturday 18th December

The book club was organised in the same way as the coffee morning, with break out rooms to allow discussions. Nobody thought much of the book and we actually spent most of our time discussing other authors so I enjoyed the session, although there was one dodgy part when a lady in Romania wanted to discuss Brexit and it all got a bit heated. In the end she was reminded that it's a book club and not a place for political discussions! It's the sort of thing I'd like to do again but they don't have a regular day or time for the sessions so it'll be down to whether it clashes with anything in the diary.

The photography challenge is going to be fun. I was right and the package from H did contain a book, 'A Year With My Camera: Workbook 1 by Emma Davies'. I have to say that my heart sank a little when I saw the book as I completed this course quite a few years ago before the workbook even existed but H went on to outline her idea for the challenge and explain the way she intends to use the book, and I'm hooked. If you're not familiar with the book, it's a back to basics on understanding photography so deals with understanding aperture, exposure, shutter speed, etc. and teaches everything you need to know to be able to use your camera on manual. As well as the explanations of the technical side of things the book is filled with homework assignments and mini projects to put into practice what you've learned and it's those assignments and projects that H is using as the basis for the challenge she is setting us.

There are four of us doing this challenge - H, myself, and two of her friends. H completed this course during the first year of the pandemic and I am competent on the technical side of photography, but her two friends are complete beginners. She wants this to be a social thing as well as a photography challenge so we cobbled together a timetable for meeting up during the first three months of next year, some in person but mostly via Zoom and the in person ones may have to move to Zoom as well depending on Covid and the weather. The idea is to complete the assignments during our meetings, even when via Zoom, so all of us have to sort out a suitable space to do that - I'm already set up for this as I have my playroom! We'll work on the assignments during the meetings but the mini projects will be done in our own time within an agreed timescale then shared with the others on the agreed date. There will be additional mini projects during the year, devised by H, but they won't be announced until the relevant dates. 

This won't start until January 1st so between now and then we have to suggest a central point to meet up in person. They all live about 100 minutes drive away from me and if you join up their locations it forms a triangle with my location roughly in the centre. The others live in Gloucester, near Taunton and near Winchester, so I think I'll probably suggest Bath as the meeting point. We also have to take a few photos to show our standard at the start of the challenge and on the 1st, H will email the details of her challenge for January. I haven't done a particularly good job of explaining the challenge but I'm definitely looking forward to it. It'll be something slightly different to be concentrating on and improving the technical side of things and also to be taking photos that address things like depth of field, negative space, blurred motion, rule of thirds, etc. It's a different sort of challenge and the social side of it addresses one of the areas of life I want to improve during 2022.